Curse of the Black Pearl was an almost perfect adventure blockbuster. A sort of our time's
Indiana Jones type treasure quest movie. My love for that first one is immense. Maybe among the first movies I truly remember adoring. I have watched it countless times.
Dead Man's Chest is terrific as well. It tries to cram in a lot of things, but I had a lot of fun watching it. But then something went terribly wrong.
At World's End was an ambitious mess, trying to tell a complex narrative but ultimately mundane, overlong and not a worthy conclusion to the story.
The fourth one was without a doubt the dullest of the bunch, given that third was the most confusing.
This one doesn't try to do anything different at all from the previous four. There is so much repetition of previous elements that one has to ask why even make a new one: another curse, another Macguffin that will stop another dead army, and while I can see that all
Pirates movies have to be about a quest, just try to be adventurous with your imagination, studio! You are prone to spend unlimited budget on this franchise! Take a page from Indy's book: similar broad story of search for a mythical artifact, but infused with enough individual personality and distinction in the story that it feels fresh. Plus interesting and fresh new characters in each succeeding iteration is also important.
There are a few set pieces I mildly enjoyed, and things are kept relatively lean and less muddled than usual, but still overall not a very engaging end result. The change of directors did not affect anything at all, in the look or general approach to the whole thing. Gore Verbinski had some truly spectacular action choreography in the original trilogy, but that even got stale as we winded down to the end of
At World's End, and by now it is as dull as rest of this franchise. No new tricks seem to be in the bag.
All the novelty of watching Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, originally a terrific Oscar worthy performance, has worn off and it has become rote, the effect dulled by constant badgering. They literally brought back Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley for 5 minutes and made such a big deal about it. Reeked of desperation. Among the new faces, Kaya Scodelario was pretty good, probably the highlight amongst the new characters. Javier Bardem was the stock villain, with a lame backstory and motivation. Brendan Thwaites was as good as Orlando Bloom, meaning he was okay.
I have no idea how this franchise can be revived. I think it is time to give it a long rest. Even though there was a gap of 6 years between this and the last one, I could not muster anticipation for it, and it seems the lowest global gross since the first one proves that audiences are tired as well.